Gioia Pizzeria: Classy New York Style Pizzeria

· by · in Dine Out, San Francisco. ·

Chalk board menu at Gioia Pizzeria

We were just strolling around and found ourselves looking into Gioia Pizzeria. A fairly new pizza place on Polk in the Russian Hill neighborhood. After some online research, we realized that this is probably related to the Gioia Pizzeria in Berkeley, which according to critics and online reviews, it’s pretty highly rated.

Gioia Pizzeria on Polk has chalkboard menu and nice wooden tables. For lunch, they offer appetizers, pizzas, salads, sandwiches, beers and wines. And for dinner, they serve some pasta dishes besides pizzas.

While trying to make up our minds about whether to try this restaurant, I asked this guy that was about to go in. Turns out he and his buddy tried the place the night before. He said that the appetizers weren’t really all that good because they were skimpy with the calamari, but the pizza is New York-style and was good.

So we thought, ok, we will try it. So we walked in and realized that they have slices available. Great! We had the following:

Slice of:

  • Cheese
  • Funghi (Mushroom)
  • Salsiccia (house made Sicilian sausage, pecorino, pickled peppers)
  • Prociutto with Arugula

and some Prosecco to wash the pizza down. 🙂

G thought all the pizzas were really salty while I only thought the Prociutto was salty because prosciutto is a dry cured ham, so lots of salt. I kinda wanted an egg on it for some reason. But they don’t have that. The pizzas are thin crusted (NY style) and fairly skimpy with cheese.

While the restaurant’s decor is classy, the food (from what we had so far) was not very impressive on taste. The prices for pizza is remarkably reasonable though ($3.50 for slice of cheese and $4.00 for other toppings) but the slices run fairly small compare to Escape from New York just down the block, and the drinks are a bit marked up. A glass of Prosecco is $9.50.

I guess if I really want some in season topping pizza, I would come back and get a slice here, but the food didn’t “WOW” me on this visit. The decor did because it’s a nice sit-down place.

Overall, this is a place we may try again, but we will have to see how it evolves in the next few months. It’s really too early to tell right now.

If you go, link back to me and let me know how you like it. I welcome your comments and suggestions on what to order/eat the next time around.  🙂

Gioia Pizzeria | 2240 Polk Street | San Francisco
Gioia Pizzeria on Urbanspoon

4 responses to “Gioia Pizzeria: Classy New York Style Pizzeria”

  1. I still remember eating new York pizza when I was in the fifth grade – you have released the yearning I forgot 😀

    Cheers
    Choc Chip Uru

    • Food is powerfully connected to memory for a lot of us. My best meals weren’t eaten in restaurants but in one of my grandma’s kitchen. 🙂 Thanks for sharing your thoughts Choc chip uru. 🙂

  2. You already know what I’m going to say.. nothing is like a NYC slice of pizza :). And you’re right.. the slices here do look small.

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